Understanding catalogs

- Knowing something about Lightroom's structureand how it keeps track of your photoscan help you to use Lightroomand to avoid getting your photos in a tangle down the road.The most important thing to understandis that a Lightroom catalog is a database.A database that stores information about your photosand the changes that you make to them in Lightroom.This database system is different than a simple filebrowsing system like you may have been used to usingwith a program like Adobe Bridge.Because Lightroom uses a database,it can do lots more for you than just browse your files.

It can display previews of your photoseven when the photos themselves are off-line.It will keep a persistent historyof all your edits to a photo,and it allows you to try out different lookson virtual copies of your photos and lots more.If you're trying to visualize what a database isthink about the big card catalog in a traditional library.This big wooden catalog contains recordsof the books on the library's shelvesbut obviously not the books themselves.Similarly, a Lightroom catalog contains recordsof your photos and video clipsbut not the actual photos and videos.

Those are stored outside of Lightroomoften on a separate drive from your catalog.And we'll talk more about where to store your photosand your Lightroom catalog in the next movie.The point to remember for now is that a Lightroom catalogis made up of just recordsof each of the photos and video clipsyou choose to include in the Lightroom catalog,kind of like the card for each book in the librarythat's in this library card catalog.So, what's in the record of each photoin your Lightroom catalog?That record contains information about the photosome of which comes from your digital cameraand some of which you may add in Lightroom,like key words, for example.

The record of photo in the Lightroom catalogalso contains descriptions of all the editsthat you make to a photo in Lightroom's Develop module.Those edits are non-destructive of your actual photosbecause they're just instructions in the Lightroom catalog.They affect the way the previewof the photo looks in Lightroombut they don't alter the original photo.These editing instructions are only appliedto copies of a photo and that's onlyif and when you output copies of the photofrom Lightroom by exporting, printing,or using one of Lightroom's other output functions.

And we'll see how to do some of thatlater in the course too.There's another important piece of informationin the record of every photo in a Lightroom catalogand that's a link to the locationwhere you've chosen to store the actual photooutside of Lightroomsimilar to the decimal number in a library card catalogthat indicates where the actual book ison the library shelves.Now that means that if you a move a photoaround outside of Lightroom,the record in the catalog will no longer be correctand Lightroom will think the photo has gone missing.

So that's something to be careful of.But even that is not the end of the world.Later in the course I'll show you howto reconnect missing photosand how to avoid breaking the linkbetween a photo in your catalog in the first place.Database files, like the ones you see here,are automatically created for youthe first time you launch Lightroomor whenever you make a new catalog in Lightroom.I'm showing you these to emphasizethat the catalog they representis separate from and different than your actual photos.These catalog files don't have to be keptin the same folder or even on the same driveas your photos as you'll see in the next movie.

One more thing to know about catalogs.How many catalogs should you have?For most Lightroom users, the best answer is one catalog.The reason is that you can only search through one catalogat a time in Lightroom,and if you only have one catalogthen you don't have to remember which onemight contain a particular photobefore you go searching for it.Having said that, there are some situationsin which it may make sense to have multiple catalogs.For example, if you are a professional photographerand you don't want to intermingle your business photoswith your personal photos, you might have morethan one catalog.

And in this course, I suggested thatif you're using the exercise files I'm providing,you create a new catalog for those filesso they don't get mixed in with your personal photos.But for most photographers, again, a single catalogreally is the simplest and best way to go.So, even if you've never used a database system,like Lightroom's, to keep track of your photos,I hope that this overview of Lightroom's catalog systemwill help you avoid some stumbles along the wayand make the best use of catalogswhen you're working with your own photos.

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Author

Updated

10/5/2015

Released

4/21/2015

Powerful, affordable, and available for Macs and Windows PCs alike, Lightroom has become an extremely popular program for photographers of all experience levels. In this course, Jan Kabili provides an approachable introduction to organizing, editing, and sharing photos in Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC. She shows how to organize and find photos using collections, keywords, and the new People view, and introduces workflows to bring out the best in photos with the Develop module: adjusting exposure, correcting color, sharpening, making local adjustments, and more. Jan also shows how to create panoramas and HDR photos right within Lightroom, and share your project with the world.